summer in the city

On the 6 Parnassus and a man begins playing some good blues guitar, and it’s a bluesy morning.  No, God, it’s a gorgeous morning.  I look up again and he’s making weird hand gestures at no one, and then he exits the bus screaming, and I have the sudden and not unhappy thought that this is exactly how my ex-boyfriends will turn out: talented but raving, and I like San Francisco very much at this moment.   

I want to be wrong about the ways I have reassessed the past, and right about everything I was sure I knew then. 

Do you ever find yourself missing something you have no business to miss?

It happens when you leave too much magic in the memories: it was true love not laziness, a good career move, only for one summer, the only thing I could have done. 

I hate to be wrong even in retrospect, especially that way.

But these days I’m cultivating a positive outlook, and I practice my smiling on the treadmill.